Linux for Designers

The website of the SVG Open 2009 is online now. This year the SVG Open take place from 2nd.-4th. October in Mountain View (USA). They started a call for participation too.

After creating a new splash for TORCS (using Blender and Gimp) i finished now a new Tango styled icon for TORCS. I enjoyed it again working with Inkscape:
How i did it:
* Set up the document (Shift+Ctrl+D) to 48x48px size
* Setup in the same dialogue the grid with 1px space
* Diplay the grid (View > Grid)
* Optional let the paths snap to the grid
* Now create/ design your icon but make sure everything used full pixel sizes/ positions
* Export the images as PNG (File > Bitmap export)

TORCS is available for Windows too and so i have to create a multiformat icon in the Windows ICO format too. Gimp make it possible to save images as the required format. The bad thing is that Gimp can't create multiformat icons (like Sibcodes plugin for Photoshop). Gimp didn't add resources it always replaces the full icon I created a bug report for Gimp 2.6.0.
Stupid me, GIMP can do!
Creating a multi-format Windows ICO with Gimp:
* Open the biggest icon PNG (in my case 48x48)
* drag all smaller resolutions into it
* If you like to create various color depths duplicate the layers often as needed (i duplicated them one time because i'd like to export 24bpp and 32bpp icons)
* Now save the layered image as an *.ico
* At save dialogue assign the color depth to any layer
* Save it, you will get an Ico file with various sizes and color depth

A week ago the KOffice project released the 10th alpha of KOffice 2 including the image editor Krita 2 and the vector drawing app Karbon14 2.
Besides a lot of fixes Krita 2 brings now the Sumi-e paintop, which is a very configurable bristle-simulating brush engine (screeny). Karbon 2 brings back the page layout editing (screeny) and new filters.

UniConvertor 1.1.3, a universal vector graphics translator for various formats, is published by the SK1 project:
* Added PDF exporter
* Added PostScript exporter
* Fixes for sk1 import/exort filters
* Fixes in model layers representation
UniConvertor could be used with Inkscape 0.46 for importing CorelDraw files *.cdr (and may in future in Scribus too). At the moment just the sources and an RPM package is available.

Today the KOffice project released the 7th alpha of KOffice 2 including the image editor Krita 2 and the vector drawing app Karbon14 2. In this alpha Krita brings a new plugin architecture. Of course the alpha 7 includes a lot of bugfixes too.

Inkscape 0.46 reaches the final state and is now available for download.

If you using Ubuntu Linux you can use these reposotories:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/inkscape.testers/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/inkscape.testers/ubuntu gutsy main

Read my older posts about the new features and the release notes of Inkscape 0.46. A bunch of screenhsots is available too.

Synfig 0.61.08 hit the streets, the list of changes is long and includes a lot of improvements and bugfixes. Synfig is a vector-based 2D animation software package.
If you like to talk to developers of Synfig you can meet them this year at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Poland.

If you try to learn Inkscape you should check out the Inkscape Tutorial Blog, which features a wide range of the possibilities using Inkscape.

Check out this list of 40 great open source graphic applications. Don't wonder the well known Gimp and Inkscape are linked at the bottom of the list.
Of course there is more

UniConvertor a universal vector graphics translator based on the sK1 engine gets updated to 1.1.1. It will used by the upcoming Inkscape 0.46 for importing CorelDraw files (*.cdr) too.
The UniConvertor supports a wide range of vector file formats like: CDR, CMX, AI, PS, EPS, SVG, WMF, CGM, AFF. Binary packages for various systems following soon.